scribbling. It’s mostly just a stream of semi-connected words and thoughts.
Car problem? Staged disappearance. Note or letter — would need to be foolproof or could tell forgery. Long-term plan?
The words seem to make sense as I write them, but they very quickly become nonsensical. One thing I do know from my writing career is that the perfect murder requires one thing above all others: meticulous planning. No aspect can be left unthought of. The way my mind is right now, I very quickly realise that I’m in no state to commit the perfect murder. As I see it, I have only one option.
20
The long walk back home gives me plenty of thinking time. My new way out might seem like the easiest option but it’s fraught with its own difficulties. If I’m going to get someone else to do my dirty work, the obvious first question is who? The how , I can leave up to them.
It’s not exactly something you can just look up in the Yellow Pages. Hit men don’t tend to pop a classified ad in the local paper, either. You either know someone or you don’t.
A thought has been rattling around at the back of my mind for a little while now, but I’ve been reluctant to address it. An old school friend of mine did time once. I say an old school friend because we’ve barely seen each other since then, but we used to be thick as thieves at school. Best mates. Neither of us was a model pupil, but Mark Crawford was something else. He was never violent or aggressive, but he had a real rebellious streak.
Mark always used to have a way round anything. He wouldn’t do anything on the straight and narrow and had a real eye for a competitive advantage. If we were playing cricket in PE he’d have a key tucked into the waistband of his shorts, perfect for carving ruts and divots in the ball to make it spin more unpredictably. And he was the only kid I knew who didn’t pay any attention in class and still managed to sail through exams. There had to be something dodgy about that, too. There was always something dodgy where Mark Crawford was involved. By the time he was twenty-two he was banged up for organising an elaborate VAT money laundering scheme involving a closed circle of limited companies he’d set up purely for that purpose.
We’d not really met face-to-face much since school, but the joys of Facebook, which admittedly I only use very rarely, and still living in the same area we grew up in meant we had bumped into each other occasionally. I’d never really told Tasha much about him. If she knew his history, she’d only judge him before she’d even met him, so I’d never bothered going into detail. Anyway, Mark and I barely saw each other, so it wasn’t relevant. We still had each other’s numbers and would send the occasional Merry Christmas text, but that was about it. All this was irrelevant right now, though. The only thing at the forefront of my mind was that Mark Crawford knew people. Bad people. People who might be able to help me out of this mess.
I’d love nothing more than to have faith in the police right now. But the problem is I can also see things from their point of view. A young girl disappears, and no-one sees her go. Add to that the fact that the prime witness completely contradicts what you’ve said, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. I grind my teeth as I think about Derek.
Anyway, where do you start looking when you don’t even know which way she went at the end of the driveway? And then, on top of it all, you have a witness — a ‘reliable’ witness with no chequered past — who says the dad never put her in the car to start with. The logical next step is to try to work out who might have taken her, and then to work out from that where they might be. Who’s suspect number one going to be? Yours truly.
I had to explain to them — without letting slip about Jen Hood — that deep down I know she’s been taken; Ellie’s not the sort of girl to just wander off, and there’s no way she
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